He explains them away with the utmost facility, and we
find him at the age of forty-five, _not unhappy, and successfully engaged
in problems of aerial navigation_" (my italics). Oh! candid simplicity of
soul! Wells, why did you not bring down the wrath of God, or at least make
the adulterer fail in the problems of flight? In quoting a description of
the Frapps, Claudius Clear says: "I must earnestly apologize for
extracting the following passage." Why? As Claudius Clear gets into his
third column his fury turns from cold to hot: "It is impossible for me in
these columns to reproduce or to describe the amorous episodes in
'Tono-Bungay.' I cannot copy and I cannot summarize the loathsome tale of
George Ponderevo's engagement and marriage and divorce. Nor can I speak of
his intrigue with a typist, and of the orgy of lust described at the close
of the book...." Now, there is not a line in the book that could not be
printed in the _British Weekly_. There is not a line which fails in that
sober decency which is indispensable to the dignity of a masterpiece. As
for George's engagement and marriage, it is precisely typical of legions
such in England and Scotland. As for the intrigue with a typist, has
Claudius Clear never heard of an intrigue with a typist before? In
faithfully and decently describing an intrigue with a typist, has one
necessarily written a "Justine"? And why "orgy of lust"? Orgy of
fiddlestick--if I am not being irreverent! The most correct honeymoon is
an orgy of lust; and if it isn't, it ought to be.
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